Let’s Talk About Risk at the Metropolitan Opera

Rene Pape, left, and Jonas Kaufmann in a scene from Wagner’s “Parsifal,” from 2013, produced by the Metropolitan Opera and directed by François Girard.

Sara Krulwich / The New York Times

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

August 6, 2014

On the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera’s revelatory new production of Borodin’s “Prince Igor” in February, you might have expected some of the backstage bitterness over the labor talks then looming to seep into the performance.

But there was not a trace of the animosity roiling the Met during that arresting evening of opera. The impressive Met choristers sang Borodin’s music with visceral intensity; the great Met Orchestra, under the inspired conducting of Gianandrea Noseda, played the score as if born to the Russian opera idiom; the backstage crew worked its typical miracles with this mesmerizing production. On that night, the Met seemed the most cohesive and artistically purposeful opera company in the world.

Who could have imagined that when the labor talks got underway this summer, one small scenic element of this alluring “Prince Igor” — the magical poppy field that covered the stage during the Polovtsian scene — would be seized upon to the point of absurdity by union members as evidence that the money woes of the Met came not from unsustainable labor costs, but from the general manager Peter Gelb’s spendthrift ways in mounting lavish new productions? That those in-house satin poppies cost $169,000 was decried. Did they have to be satin? How about pre-made plastic ones?

As I write this, Mr. Gelb’s threatened work shutout, a potentially disastrous move, has been put off while a financial consultant studies the books to see if things are as dire as Mr. Gelb maintains. A mediator is at work, and the company seems to have calmed down for the moment. But just for the moment.

It’s telling that both sides have latched on to the role of new productions to buttress their arguments. Mr. Gelb has long said that bold new productions will bring opera in line with the latest currents in theater and entice new audiences to the house and to the Met’s HD simulcasts around the world, which are reaching some 2.5 million viewers each season. The unions claim that the new productions are too risky and expensive.

Outsiders cannot possibly understand the internal dynamics of an institution as large and complex as the Met. But this argument over the new productions could compromise the artistic ambition and global influence of the company.

The formidable Met Orchestra players and choristers, who occupy the top tiers in their field and are paid accordingly, should be careful of debunking the importance of new productions. Shouldn’t the Met of all companies take risks? Some of the recommendations from the unions on other ways to trim the budget without cutting salaries and benefits would compromise the artistic ambition of the house, especially the stupefying suggestion that the Met should not present so many long operas.

So much for “Parsifal,” a five-and-a-half-hour evening at the opera. Get ready for “Pagliacci.”

Actually, the director François Girard’s haunting, apocalyptic, superbly cast, sublimely conducted new production of Wagner’s “Parsifal” was one of Mr. Gelb’s most significant ventures. If the Met cannot present “Parsifal” in a performance and production as ambitious as this one, then what is it for?

Video With a lockout increasingly likely, the show may not actually go on this fall at the Metropolitan Opera.

Now, Mr. Gelb has been criticized legitimately for mounting too many trendy, timid shows. The director Deborah Warner’s unfocused staging of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” was not as daring, and certainly not as beautiful, as the Robert Carsen production it replaced.

Opera is musical drama, yes, but music matters more than the quality of productions. The tenor Jonas Kaufmann’s magnificent singing in the title role of Massenet’s “Werther” this past season will surely be remembered longer than the muddled new staging of the opera that Mr. Gelb gave us.

Contrast this with the “Prince Igor.” Borodin left the score in disarray at his death, so every production must be a reclamation job. The ingenious director of this one, Dmitri Tcherniakov devised a version of the score that brought narrative drive and musical flow to the work. Here was the Met taking risks, making news and championing a humane and stirring, if problematic, opera.

There have been several other productions on Mr. Gelb’s watch where a dream cast, the ideal conductor and a visionary director came together to shake up the opera world, including Patrice Chéreau’s wrenching take on Janacek’s “From the House of the Dead,” with the conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen in his Met debut, and Mr. Carsen’s poignantly funny updating of Verdi’s “Falstaff,” with James Levine, an incomparable Verdian, in the pit.

And some of the productions that made strong artistic statements were the most radical ones, like Willy Decker’s surreal staging of Verdi’s “La Traviata,” scheduled to return in December.

Overall, the mix of solid hits and so-so shows under Mr. Gelb had been about in line with the record of previous general managers. Yet, Mr. Gelb’s new productions seem not to have reversed the decline in attendance. At a time of financial crisis, he must grapple with tough questions: Will he continue with the Met’s “Traviata” for the foreseeable future? Having seen it once, will Verdi fans, even those deeply affected by the production, want to see it again? And again?

When Mr. Gelb arrived in 2006, he presented himself as a business-savvy savior come to bring innovation to a field in crisis and rescue a great company heading toward insolvency. Such talk, among other annoying things, slighted the record of his predecessor, Joseph Volpe, who, during 16 years, expanded the Met’s repertory with some 20 works new to the company, including daring 20th-century operas like Shostakovich’s “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District,” a powerful 1994 production slated to return this season. You could argue that another Volpe initiative, Met Titles, the company’s innovative system of seat-back English translations, introduced in 1995, did as much, if not more, to demystify opera and entice newcomers to the house than the HD broadcasts.

Mr. Gelb rightly points to the serious structural challenges that have long been undermining American opera companies and orchestras. Other fields, like higher education and publishing, can learn to do more with a smaller staff. But an opera company cannot reduce the personnel required to put on “Die Meistersinger.”

On the whole, one hopes that the unions will tone down the rhetoric. In his public statements, Mr. Gelb has consistently praised the artists and technicians at the Met, whereas many company members have denigrated their boss as overbearing and clueless. How can these put-downs not engender serious doubts about the Met among the very public the company needs to court right now?

When the New York City Opera kept downsizing in a desperate attempt to stay in business, it seemed unthinkable that New York, the cultural capital of the world, could not find a way to support two major opera companies. Come September, if a work shutout is imposed, and the talks are not resolved, New York could be left without any.